Is it cold in here, or is it just your shoulder?

Bust out the flaming garbage cans and throw an extra rabbit on the fire...IT'S COLD! Now, to be entirely fair, the 20-degree highs in Charlotte today are NOWHERE near the highs of 26-degrees...BELOW ZERO.. in Fargo, North Dakota. Yes, we midwesterners understand the risk when we live there. But that's just "ridiculous cold" (a couple of notches past "stupid cold" and "what the fuck was I thinking coming out here without any pants on cold"). And it's worse in spots where there's snow. My friends and family in Chicago were battening down the hatches for some flurries, but they never came. Still, the city was prepared:



It's funny, my co-worker (NOT a Chicago-phile) thinks the Sears Tower and Hancock Building look like the World Trade Center towers and thought it might be in bad taste. I tried to assure her the Twin Towers were NOT brought down by an evil, giant snowman...but she was having none of it.

Speaking of the Twin Towers, I watched a documentary called "Man on Wire" today. Pick it up (whether it be through Blockbuster, Netflix, Best Buy...or even by illegal download...it's THAT good). It's about the guy who walked a tightrope/cable strung between the towers back in 1974. It's fascinating, has some thrills, some romance. It also reminded me of the good video there is out there of the Twin Towers...NOT GETTING BLOWN TO KINGDOM COME BY A BUNCH OF DUMBASS HIJACKERS. Seriously, it seems like every Twin Towers-related documentary in the last 5 years has had something to do with the 9/11 attacks. It's nice to see something that celebrates something that happened while the World Trade Center was still standing.

And speaking of movies and the war on terror, Joe the Retar...I mean, PLUMBER...is officially "embedded" in the Gaza Strip, covering the war between Israel and Hamas. I saw a soundbite from him that suggested reporters should not be embedded in the war, that we should instead be informed about the war by those little newsreel clips shown at the beginning of movies back in the 1940s. Really? The reason some moron decided it was a good idea to send you over there (provided he wasn't trying to get you killed) is because he wanted you to give a perspective of the war that we CAN'T get from just a couple of 20-second stories on our local news channel. YOU'RE GETTING PAID to make those little newsreels seem worthless. Seriously, you don't want to plumb for your living, you don't want to report for your living, what DO you want to do??? Because, frankly, you appear to only be good at one thing, and I don't think you have the CEO/Manager credibility to be sitting around on your thumbs all day. Remember, kids, just say no to crack.

A big congrats to the Carolina Panthers for a strong season...that ended in a home playoff game last Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals. "Dear Jake Delhomme....FIVE PICKS??? REALLY??? Love, Blaine."

Speaking of playoffs, it's mid-January, which means we're about 2 months from March Madness. And it's almost time for Thinking Hard's 2nd Annual "Hottest Mess" tournament. I'm tracking some of the major players and thinking of opening it up to people outside Hollywood. But I have to take some road trips to scout possible competitors...and I hear Alaska is downright frigid this time of year.
-B-